Blackberry Passport Smartphone Unveiled

With the rise of iOS and Android smartphones where most of them have completely removed the physical keyboards out of the picture, Blackberry is one of those companies that does not ready giving up the physical keyboards on their smartphones yet. That's is one of the main reasons they just unveiled a new smartphone from their portfolio and it is called the Blackberry Passport.

Unlike any other Blackberry devices, the Passport features a perfect square face with 4.5" display and boasting a resolution of 1440x1440 and 453ppi. Plus it only sports a 3-line keyboard which looks very simple yet smartly created. User can still navigate using the screen itself as it is also features touch functionality and it is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Other specs include a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors at 2.2GHz, 3GB of RAM and a 32GB internal storage. It also supports microSD card for up to 128GB. The back camera sports a 13MP resolution with autofocus and optical image stabilization functions, a f/2.0 aperture lens and LED flash are also on board to make photo capturing moment experience better than ever. The front side has a 2MP camera. Running out of battery in a very short span of time is not going to be an issue with the device as it is packed with a 3,450mAh battery which Blackberry claims to last up to 30 hours on a single charge.

The stainless steel-framed Passport smartphone is powered by a Blackberry 10.3 OS which comes with Blackberry Blend sharing software. With this features users can easily share files, contents and messages from the Passport with other popular devices such as Mac and Windows PCs with Mac OS X 10.7 (or higher) and Windows 7 OS (or higher) respectively, and iPads running iOS 7 or higher and Android tablets running Android 4.4 or higher.

Blackberry, especially this BB 10.3 OS version now has its own digital assistant and they are calling it Blackberry Assistant. This can help users with their queries and creating appointment reminders either through voice or text commands. Users will also have access to the Blackberry Appworld and Amazon Appstore through this new flagship device.

The Blackberry Passport is now available in the US for $599 off contract and is expected to be available on AT&T with about $250 price on a two-year contract. It's also for sale in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, and is coming to 30 other countries by year-end.

And just like so many Blackberry smartphones before, the video clip below still shows that the Passport is still mainly aiming at professional consumers.